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Double agent Oleg Gordievsky dies aged 86

Frank Gardner
Security Correspondent
Emily Coady-Stemp
BBC News, South East
BBC Oleg Gordievsky looks at the camera, has short white hair and is wearing a white shirt under a dark suit jacket. There is a lawn in the background.BBC
Oleg Gordievsky has died at his home in Surrey aged 86, the BBC understands

Oleg Gordievsky, the long-standing KGB double agent who defected to Britain, has died aged 86.

Gordievsky was said to be Britain's most valuable spy in living memory inside Russia's intelligence agencies.

Counter-terrorism police are assisting the coroner, but his death is not being treated as suspicious.

He died peacefully at his home in Surrey, the BBC understands.

Getty Images Oleg Gordievsky looks at the camera, he is wearing glasses and has a beard and a moustache. He is wearing a white shirt, black braces and a brown tie and the background behind him is an arched corridor painted in a pale pink.Getty Images
Oleg Gordievsky in disguise in the Marlborough Hotel in London in 1990

Gordievsky, a colonel in Russia's KGB, spent many years as a double agent, passing vital intelligence to both Britain's MI6 and MI5.

He has lived in Godalming under police protection since Moscow became suspicious of him in 1985 and he narrowly escaped arrest, trial and a firing squad by getting smuggled across the border into Finland in the boot of a car.

Two years earlier, as the KGB resident in London at the height of the Cold War, he warned his British handlers that Moscow had become so paranoid about an imaginary surprise attack by the West that the Soviet Union began making preparations to strike first.

As a result of his tip-off, NATO curtailed its military exercise codenamed Able Archer, and the crisis was averted.

'A very substantial coup'

In 2007, Gordievsky was honoured by the Queen with the Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George.

The honour is the same title bestowed on fictional British Secret Service agent James Bond.

Information passed on by Gordievsky led to the expulsion of 25 Soviet agents working undercover in the UK.

At the time of his work as a double agent, his defection was hailed by then Foreign Secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe as "a very substantial coup for our security forces".

Gordievsky has since written a number of books about the operations of the KGB.

Getty Images Oleg Gordievsky wearing a suit and top hat with a medal on a blue and red striped ribbon around his neck. The medal is gold in colour and has seven shapes protruding from its edges, one of which attaches it to the ribbon.Getty Images
Gordievsky received the Companion of the Most Distinguished Order of St Michael and St George in 2007

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